Machaho Tellem Chaho

While sex, drugs and pizzas have been stable story elements in Algerian novels over the past decade (for pizzas, read Chawki Amari), a prominent place given to smoking seems relatively new to me in our fiction as far as my readings go. Algerian novelist Fatma Zohra Zamoum has given an amusing and original twist to this ever present, highly enjoyed, and deadly social activity. Read the full review on Arabic Literature in English .

In 2015, Algerian literature was marked by great authors. Find out what these novels were and who their authors are on Arab Lit in Literature : 2015 in Algerian Literature: Five to Watch

Just discovered Algerian author Ryad Girod and his second novel The end that awaits us (La Fin qui nous attend), a novel set during an earthquake, published in French, in November 2015 by Barzakh editions. If you read French, here's my review of the book on Huff Post Algeria : "La Fin qui nous attend" de Ryad Girod.

Yacine and Adel are two old friends on their way to work. Yacine, the dreamer of the two, works for a museum in Algiers about to get closed because of lack of funds. He is on his way to a difficult meeting with the museum director, Mr Yousfi, an old and gentle man desperately trying to save the museum. Adel, always cautious and down to earth, works in a bank and promises to try and think of something that might raise some funds. The two friends meet after work to go and grab a bite to eat but Yacine receives a phonecall from Yousfi who asks him to come urgently. The Minister of Culture's decision regarding the museum's affairs is about to fall: it will be closed and not even a private venture can save it. Yacine and Adel make their way to the museum, where Yacine goes off to meet with Yousfi, while Adel waits for them and wanders off in the various private rooms usually closed to public view. He enters a fully furnished medieval style bedroom, hangs his coat on a...

Adel s'emm ê le [Adel gets entangled] is Algerian novelist Salim Aissa’s second detective novel. It was published in 1988 by ENAL editions. His first was Mimouna , published the year before in 1987. I've found no information about who Salim Aissa is, and found no other books published by him after these two, and what a shame that is. Adel s'emmele is one of the best Algerian detective novels of the 80s I've read. By that I mean it is (finally) a detective story written for adults, it doesn't have the (excruciating) excess of wisecracks, no adjectival abusem its narrative is tight and flows (great editing for once). And crime is not glazed over. Adel is a bullheaded police inspector who works in Algiers, a chaotic capital in which crime abounds. There, further injustice is created daily by a lethargic public system in which all involved are corrupted. In an environment that is becoming increasingly aggressive and violent, Adel and his colleagues, Che...

Do you know Algerian novelist Chawki Amari? Have you heard of his latest novel The Dead Donkey (L'ane mort)? Here's my review of this novel, his latest, and a general overview of Amari's work on ArabLit : New Algerian Fiction: Up a Mountain with a Donkey in the Trunk .

Les pirates du d ésert ( Pirates of the desert ) is a detective novel, written by Algerian author Zehira Houfani. Houfani was born in 1952 in Kabylie (M'kira). She moved to Canada in 1994 and continues writing. Zehira Houfani published her first novel Le Portrait du disparu [Portrait of a missing person] in 1984, with ENAL eds. Then came Les pirates du desert (ENAL, 1986), followed by L’Incomprise [A woman misunderstood] in 1989 (ENAL). Since then, Houfani seems to have only published non-fiction. Her latest book Jenan, la condamnée d’Al-Mansour [Jenan, the convict of Al-Mansour] was published in 2008 and recounts the bombings she experienced while working in Iraq for an NGO. Les pirates du désert (Pirates of the desert) is a light, and entertaining detective story set in Tamanrasset where Omrane, the political representative of the Algerian government there, is trying his utmost to stop crime in Tam, but to no avail. A gang has rapidly grown from small time...

The story is set in February, we are not told the year but we are in the second half of the 90s when war raged in Algeria between factions, armed groups, police and army cells, using civilians as ammunitions. Events unfold in Algiers and Tamanrasset. Djoudet, or Djo, is a retired Chief Superintendent, widowed, with a son who lives abroad and with whom he rarely speaks. He had gone to live in Tamanrasset but had returned to Algiers for a few weeks, which turned into months. One morning, he receives a phonecall from Zedma, the Kalashnikov-ed leader of an Islamic group. Zedma asks Djo to repay an old debt. He had once saved Djo’s life during an ambush. The government had always tolerated Zedma and those like him. But now, mysteriously re-emerging after a six-year absence, Zedma reappears on the scene protected by the government. Zedma, still head of an armed Islamic group, asks Djo to find a young boy, Amine, who has disappeared. The young receveur , a bus driver assistant w...

If you haven't heard of the French craze around Boualem Sansal's latest novel, 2084: the end of the world, it's a good thing! If you'd like to read about it, and take a peak at what lays behind the story, read my latest review for ArabLit : Why Algerian Novelist Boualem Sansal’s ‘2084’ is a Sensation in France .

French crime novelist Jeremie Guez, who often features Algeria, the Maghreb and Algerians in the background of his stories, will see his third polar novel published in English translation (by Edward Gauvin) on 10 November with Unnamed Press . Read my review of Eyes Full of Empty and its links to other Algerian crime novels here ( in French for Huff Post Algerie) .

This review originally appeared on El Watan 2014 .   "What are monkeys waiting for to turn into humans?" This question is the axis of Yasmina Khadra's new novel titled What are monkeys waiting for ( Qu'attendent les singes ) and it fits Algeria's current political situation well, with the presidential elections coming up and talks of a transition. But first, you might ask, who are the monkeys in question? Nora, chief inspector in Algiers' police force, is called one early morning to Bainem forest where a young girl has been found murdered, mutilated. Nora begins her investigation in a seemingly present-day Algiers, where the city's background are cursing taxi drivers and former hustlers turned power-holders. Its foreground, a corrupted Algerian press and a gangrened intellectual scene. With a will of steal, incorruptible and supported by a team of male colleagues only misogynist and homophobic on the surface, Nora begins investigati...

Shadow 67 ( Ombre 67 ) briefly begins in Algiers with two cousins who go to pick up their tourist visas to go to Paris and Madrid. Rashid is a scientist working for an international company and is taking his closest friend, his cousin Karim, with him on a week holiday. The next morning of their arrival in Paris, on their way to visit the Eiffel Tower, Rashid pales before a man he sees far away in the crowd and who advances towards him calling him Hassan. Panicked, Rashid hurries his cousin back to the hotel, and with no explanation forces him into a cab and orders him to return to Algiers, then disappears. Karim of course does not return home, makes his way back to their original hotel and begins to search for his disappeared cousin. After having alerted the French police, the Algerian Embassy in Paris and enrolling the help of a woman journalist looking for a scoop, he becomes embroiled in a case a lot more threatening than had at first appeared : the 11th century sect the A...

Do you know Johnny Cash's song I hung my head ? A man goes out to practice shooting, early one morning. Not paying particular attention to his surroundings, he fires into the distance and his bullet shoots a rider down. I always felt this song captures the fixed and unforgiving essence of doom, how one single moment, one single action, can make your entire life tip over, to merge the real and the nightmares. Perhaps we've all been at the threshold of such moments? Perhaps not. But it is the kind of texts that sends ice cold waves down one's spine (well mine), because it tells and foretells life's potential for horror.  Abdelhamid Ben Hadouga's novel ' The South Wind ' sends such shivers, only they will be burning, as burning as the guebli- wind. The story is set post-independence (the novel was published in 1971) and the Algerian government is about to implement its land redistribution plan. Nafissa, a young university student, returns to...

In the Algerian-authors-who-write-detective-novels league, Yasmina Khadra has to be top man. It pains me to say this I must confess, not because interviews have put the spotlight only on his egocentric traits making him a rather indigestible character, but because of the sheer Russian- roulette-style of his work.  I’ve often wondered, how can a man write so outstandingly well (see his work’s crown-jewel L'Olympe des infortunes, 2010), and in parallel write so shockingly badly (see the abysmal L’Attentat translated in EN by John Cullen as The Attack ). These manic up-and-down literary turns leave me baffled, but admittedly, keep me interested.   This aside, he never fails in the detective fiction genre. His very enjoyable and well-netted Inspector Llob series can't be put down. The central theme of Khadra’s detective stories is corruption within the police force and politics, and he explores how these corrupted worlds both merge, clash, and merge again, ...

Chawki Amari published his novel Nationale 1 ( Highway 1 ) in 2007. In it, he recounts the story of Kalim and his car Taos, both leaving Algiers to go and see Boudjemaa. He heads to In Guezzam, Algeria's furthest point South knowing that "Boudjem3a is not waiting in In Guezzam". Nationale 1 is also the story of Algeria, and the magic of its topography. Algeria is around 2,4 million km2. It is the 11 th biggest country in the world. North-South, it begins from a coastal area with its toes in the Mediterranean, continues South, past the Tropic of Cancer, further than NATO's geographic limits for member countries, and finishes at In Guezzam, because, once upon a time, not so long ago, the coloniser's ball pen marked a spot on a map, to keep to himself underground water resources, otherwise rare in the area. Algeria's topographic variety is bewildering. Its upper area is contoured by the sea, its lower body by the third largest desert on earth...

It's the end of the day, and a taxieur last fare forgets her bag in the car. N ext morning, he goes back to the address to return the bag to the woman. For this, he doesn’t expect to spend seven months in jail. It was not Mourad's unsuspicious nature that sent him to El Harrach’s 7 Hectares jail, it was the unpretentious belief he’d been struck by love at first sight by Farida as he drove her to her parents’ home. Farida, though, had been murdered 18 months previously, and had long been buried.  While investigating a crime that wasn’t one, and a murder that never took place, Mourad discovers that Farida is in fact Ghislaine, a twin born in Algeria and stolen away by a gang trafficking babies just before Algeria’s independence. In Intrigue at Sidi Fredj , Khaled Mandi tells a tale in an Enid-Blyton-style that plays with djinns, ghosts, folklore, the reality of jail life, inmates’ solidarity and a crushing Algerian justice system. Should Mandi have closed the st...

"Qallek : buss l kleb men femmu 7ta teqdi 7djetek mennu" "Embrasse le chien sur son museau jusqu’à ce que tu ais obtenu ce que tu désires" "Kiss a dog on his muzzle until you obtain what you want from him" no. 201 Great way to say 'do what you have to do'! Old proverbs and wisdoms are always so charming and visual, as is this collection of Algerian proberbs in Derja. l-klam fi weqtu dewa . Lemtoul enta3 'z'men (Proverbs of old) is a small book packed full of Algerian proverbs collected by Fakira-Wassila Douar, a researcher who has concentrated on wisdoms that are, or were, used specifically in Algiers. This 122 pages book was published by Dar El Othmania in 2013, and contains 337 sayings, plus 12 buqalat (بوقالات).  Each proverb is given in the Algerian language, written in latin transcription and in Arabic transcription. The proverb is then translated into French (by M. Amine Mehrez), and many of them are foll...

Djamel Dib is another novelist whose name is said to make the top 10 in the Algerian detective-story writers category. Another francophone writer, sorry about that.  Dib is said to be part of the second wave of Algerian detective novel's development (started from the mid-80s).  The Djinns' Saga (La Saga des Djinns) was published in 1986 by the Entreprise Nationale du Livre. La Saga des Djinns starts off well enough. It is set just outside Tamanrasset on an oil dig in the mid 80s. The inislimen Moussa Abegui is on his way to his zaouia to enter a long meditation. He knows trouble is coming (1) and blood is about to pour as an ancestral secret has been violated.  He is very good friends with Obed, the director of the oil dig managed by an all Algerian crew of specialists.  As Sheikh Abegui makes his way followed by a strong sense of unease, three murders occur on the rig.  That is when inspector Antar arrives, assisted by his two detectives, l'Appren...

This detective novel with no detective was inspired by a confidence Varenne's dad told him as he passed away. It is the story of proletaires French youths sent to do their military service in Algeria and finding themselves face to face with their comrades who unflinchingly practiced torture as ordered by their hierarchy. In this novel, as with Fredy La Rafale by Mohamed Benayat , it is a French guy, The Wall (Le Mur), a boxer, who is sort of hired to help carry out retribution. The Wall, the Kabyle and the Sailor tells the story of French soldiers who refused to obey orders to torture Algerians during Algeria's war of independence against France, how they developed complex war-friendships with Algerian inmates, and how they left Algeria completely traumatised by what they had witnessed, spending the rest of their lives trying to forget. But Algerians never forget, and in this novel, Le Kabyle returns to seek vengeance. And he smashes it. Pow!

In the Algerian detective story genre, Mohamed Benayat and his Fredy La Rafale are references. It's part of my Algerian detective story  reading trek. So far, I've only encountered DZ detective stories written in French. The version of the book I found is 200 pages long with several pages printed twice, one after the other (which made for some surreal late night reading). It was published by l'Entreprise Nationale du Livre, Algiers in 1991. It's a short novel, fast-paced and quite well written when the author gets going.  There are several parts, the beginning in particular and middle sections, which are disturbingly. stop. telegraphic. stop. written. in.stop. hic-up style (fortunately nothing like the he said-she said-he said-she said-he replied  torture of that awful book Djibouti by Elmore Leonard... never buying a New York bestseller ever again...) Fredy La Rafale is set in France, just before and just after the 1961 massacre of Algerians in Paris.  ...